Famous Vegans - Dennis Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich, 2011.

Dennis Kucinich

Born Dennis John Kucinich on October 8, 1946. He is an American politician, born in Cleveland. At the age of 23, he was elected to Cleveland's City Council. At the age of 31, he became their mayor. At the time, he was the youngest person ever elected to lead a major American city. Since 1997, he has been the U.S. Representative for Ohio's 10th congressional district. He was also a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 2004 and 2008. He is the author of the books The Courage To Survive and A Prayer for America. You can find his website at this link.

Dennis Kucinich is a vegan and a strong advocate for animal rights. On his website, he has a page dedicated to animal rights issues.

Quotes by Dennis Kucinich:

"If I say I'm for peace, I'm for peace in the kind of products that I use, in the kind of shoes that I wear, and in terms of the clothes that I wear, in terms of my eating habits."

"Peace means being in harmony with nature. If you're in harmony with nature, you don't exploit nature. You don't ruin the land, you don't extract the oil, you don't take the coal out of the earth."

Asked why he became vegan, he answered:

"Well, I met someone and fell in love with her and adopted the vegan diet that she was on."

"In the book ... Courage To Survive, I talk about a bout with Crone’s disease that I had since I was a little kid. I didn’t know until years later in life that dairy products had something to do with irritating that condition. And so when I switched diets – this was in 1995 – I started to achieve a level of health that I didn’t have before."

He was asked what he would do if he was made the absolute dictator of the U.S. for one day:

"I think I would order everyone to have vegan chocolate chip brownies."

"I've been a vegan now since 1995, and as a result I've had tremendous health, I've had great energy, clarity. I've had the ability to be able to connect my dietary choices with my health."

"I started to understand also how the choice of diet affects the environment, resources, energy."

"Also the matters of compassion towards living creatures who become food. We need to be more thoughtful as a nation about the choices that we make and the food that we consume."

Quotes are from his 2009 i nterview with reddit.com, where he answers their top questions, his interview with Vibrance, his 2007 interview with Grist and his 2007 clip W hy I am Vegan on bigthink.